David Grimes

Composer

Media

Bio

Unlike most, I always knew what I wanted to be when I grewup - an “inventor” of music. Coming from a musical family, sound, organized orotherwise, was something that was always around me. Both of my mother’s parentswere classical piano teachers and my father’s brother was a professionalcocktail/big band pianist. Interestingly and maybe even sadly, I never sought nor was given pianolessons. This did not prevent me from exploring what sounds could be coaxedfrom the two grand and one upright pianos that were in the house.

Outside the home there were two incredibly powerfulexperiences that have had a lasting influence on my sense of what music shouldor could be. The first was hearing the Nuns at Notre Dame Novitiate singGregorian chant at the many masses I served as an alter boy in Ipswich, MA. Thesecond was a quite different experience: standing in front of Stan Kenton’s bigband (the one with the mellophoniums) at some ballroom in Lowell and beingsmacked in the face by more sound than I thought was possible to generate.

For some reason my parents didn’t want me to study music,thinking that this was not a wise career choice. I was stubborn, they relented,and I attended the Berklee College of Music, majoring in Arranging and Composition.From there I went to the University of Toronto, which boasted the second oldestelectronic music studio in North America (the oldest being at ColumbiaUniversity), and received a graduate degree in composition.

I was a founding member of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble.I taught at Berklee and Northeastern University. I hosted a contemporary musicprogram on CBC Radio called Two New Hours.My music was awarded a number of prizes, including “Best Broadcast of CanadianMusic” for a piece called “Ecce Lignum Crucis”, which was a setting of theEaster liturgy for voices, orchestra, and electronics.

The influences of my youth have never left me and have onlybecome stronger. Music for me has always been about some vague mystical,spiritual quality that is balanced by secular, corporeal, and dissonantelements that join together to form a complete, though never completelyaccurate picture of what is human emotion. Music is and always has been aboutemotion, especially those emotions that cannot be easily put into words. If itwere possible to express these myriad emotions with words, I suppose I mighthave always wanted to grow up to be a poet.